


Summer Rain and Crayons

by sleepinggiant



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Dead Terry Milkovich, Domestic Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich, Fluff, M/M, Married Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich, Mickey and the Gallaghers - Freeform, Post-Season/Series 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:20:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23756764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepinggiant/pseuds/sleepinggiant
Summary: Mickey finds that he's finally able to start opening up a little about his past to the people he trusts, and eventually gets some news he's spent years hoping for.
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 24
Kudos: 265





	Summer Rain and Crayons

**Author's Note:**

> This one goes out to all my fellow shameless fans who've been around since the early days. Look how far we've come!
> 
> Kudos and comments mean the world :) Enjoy!

Maybe Mickey would have admitted not minding Franny’s favorite movie the first time she demanded they all watch it together, but by the fifth time he had had enough of the dumb green ogre and his annoying fucking donkey sidekick. He might have still enjoyed sitting on the Gallagher couch with his husband’s massive arm draped around his shoulders while Franny sat on the floor in front of them speaking back to the characters on the TV, but he was sure as hell still gonna complain about it.

“I’m just sayin’, I’m pretty sure other movies have been made since this piece of shit came out,” he grumbled. “How about branching out a little, lil’ Red?”

Ian ran a dismissive hand through his hair and Franny ignored him entirely. At least Mickey wasn’t the only one not really paying attention to the movie; Debbie was propped up against Sandy on the floor in front of the couch, both looking at their phones, Carl looked half asleep, and Lip and Tami were having a whispered conversation in the armchair. Liam had his head propped up in his hand on the other side of the couch and was watching the screen with a concentrated look on his face like he was watching a particularly interesting wildlife documentary, and Ian, the fucking nerd, was actually paying attention too, despite Mickey’s repeated attempts at distracting him.

Fred was asleep upstairs, his baby monitor lying on the coffee table, and despite the questionable movie choices, Mickey was secretly pleased to see this tentative new trend of movie nights continue well past that first time two weeks earlier. It had been a while before that since the whole group had sat down together and actually spent time with each other without Lip and Tami running off to argue or fuss over Fred, or Debbie and Sandy leaving to do things Mickey didn’t want to spend any time thinking about, or Carl fucking off to do whatever Carl does.

Mickey glanced over at Liam. He thought back to when he himself was at that age, and he was surprised by his own gratefulness that Liam was able to sit down with his family and enjoy a film aimed at kids. Even if the way Liam had been neglected by his older siblings at times before the wedding had never gotten anywhere near what Mickey had experienced at his age, it still grated on Mickey’s nerves, and he was glad things were getting a little better for the kid. The wedding had changed things for the better in many ways; the house started to feel more like a home, more like it had a few years before, and the siblings started to make more of an effort to actually spend time together.

When the movie finally came to a close with that song that Mickey was annoyed to find he knew the words to at this point, Debbie looked over at her daughter.

“Almost time for bed, okay, Franny?” She said with a lazy smile, but made no move to actually get up just yet. The atmosphere in the living room was so calm and comfortable, Mickey didn’t blame her.

“Okay, mommy,” Franny said distractedly, as she was rifling through a stack of papers she had left on the coffee table. She seemed to find what she was looking for and bounded over to Ian and Mickey, handing over the sheet of paper to them. “True love’s kiss. Like in the movie!”

Mickey looked down at the piece of paper to see two stick figures, one with a bright orange-colored head and so tall it took up the whole length of the paper, and the other significantly shorter with black scribbles for hair. They were standing next to each other and leaning forward, their faces touching in what was apparently a true love’s kiss. Yellow lines radiated off them and a whole audience of gaping little stick figures watched from the background.

If it were anyone else, Mickey would have plenty of snide comments about the drawing. But he’d taken a shine to Franny, and he was secretly a little impressed by her drawing skills. If he was being completely honest, it was one of the best drawing he’d ever seen.

“This is beautiful, Franny,” Ian said, and Mickey didn’t even need to look at him to see the huge smile on his face. He did anyway. “Thank you.”

“Not bad, lil’ Red,” Mickey added. “This’ll have to go on the fridge.”

Franny beamed as if a spot on the fridge was akin to a spot in the Louvre.

After everyone had admired the drawing and said goodnight to Franny, she went with Debbie upstairs to be put to bed. Once Debbie had settled back in next to Sandy and Lip had grabbed more beers for everyone but Liam, Ian was still smiling down at the drawing, which was back in his hands. Mickey noticed Liam looking over at it with the same calculating gaze he had had while watching the movie.

“Speaking of true love’s kiss,” Liam said in his matter-of-fact, I-may-be-ten-but-I’m-smarter-than-most-adults voice, “I was wondering, how did you two even get together? I mean, from what you’ve told me, you weren’t exactly friends before, and I’m assuming you didn’t just go around telling strangers you were gay.”

Mickey groaned internally at where this was going and took a large swig of his beer. He didn’t particularly want to have this conversation with this many people in the room, but he also didn’t want to leave the room when they were all enjoying each other’s company, so he figured he’d let Ian do the talking and hope that this didn’t go on for too long.

Ian clearly had no qualms about getting into it, chuckling at his brother and running his fingers through Mickey’s hair again as though he knew exactly what he was thinking.

“Well,” Ian started, and Mickey found himself listening with curiosity about which details Ian would include and which he’d leave out. Evidently, everyone else in the room was pretty curious too. “I went over to his house to get a gun he’d stolen from this guy I was sleeping with.”

“Right, jesus,” Lip chimed in, “I forgot about Kash. I wonder where that old creep is now.”

“Far away from here, if he knows what’s good for him,” Mickey grumbled a little louder than strictly necessary. Lip just looked amused.

“So what happened? Did you get the gun?” Liam pressed on.

“Well, yeah,” Ian replied. “After some… other stuff happened.”

The awkward tone of his voice left no one guessing what the ‘other stuff’ was, but Liam, to his credit, just shot his brother a grossed-out look and continued.

“But how did you both know that the other would be into that?” Mickey decided Ian was completely on his own there. He could hear poorly concealed laughter from the others. Before Ian got the chance to attempt a response to that, Liam added, “and who kissed who first?”

At that, Mickey could practically feel the smugness radiating off of Ian. This time, he groaned out loud, but didn’t have the heart to shut down Liam’s line of questioning just yet.

“ _Well_ ,” Ian said, clearly delighted at the turn of events. “He wouldn’t let me kiss him that first time, but then a year or so later, he kissed me right before robbing the house of another guy I was sleeping with for insurance fraud.”

Mickey found himself back in that van, remembering how nervous he’d been only to briefly press his lips against Ian’s before flipping him off and literally running away. It felt like a lifetime ago.

“Isn’t that when you got shot in the ass?” Sandy asked Mickey with a shit-eating grin, fully aware of the answer to her own question.

“Fuck off,” came Mickey’s dignified response.

“Wait, you got shot in the ass?” Tami chimed in, and Mickey glared at her. “By who?”

Mickey decided that would be a good time to head to the kitchen and grab another beer, letting the others fill in Tami in the meantime and taking Franny’s drawing with him to pin it on the fridge. After moving some other lists and pictures out of the way to make sure Franny got the best spot, he grabbed a beer just for himself, ‘cause fuck everyone else right now. By the time he headed back into the living room, though, he realized he probably should have stopped this conversation a little earlier.

“So you got shot _twice_ , both times involving separate creepy older men Ian was sleeping with?” Tami asked eagerly, apparently a little more filled in than Mickey had expected. Ian at least had the sense to look a little embarrassed, but he smiled at Mickey as he sat back down at his side with another glare thrown around at everyone for good measure.

“I hate you all”, he grumbled at them, taking a sip of his beer.

“Nah, you don’t,” Ian said quietly, beaming at Mickey. Mickey ignored him.

“Wait a minute,” Liam took the reins of the conversation again, and everyone let him, intrigued to see where this was going. “When did you actually become a couple then?”

That caught Mickey a little off guard. He waited for Ian’s response, with no idea of what it would be.

“Huh,” Ian said, clearly not really knowing either. “I guess we weren’t really official until I asked him if we were a couple. That wasn’t until after he got married.”

“Wait- _married_?” Liam replied. “Mickey’s been married before?”

Before Ian could reply, though, Mickey felt the need to correct him.

“Are you kidding?” He said, slightly indignant. “We were clearly a couple way earlier. Probably around the time I got shot.”

“Which time?” Sandy piped up.

“THE FIRST TIME,” Mickey all but yelled at her, but even his best glare only made her and Debbie look at each other and giggle.

Ian just smiled at Mickey as if he was falling in love all over again, and Mickey suddenly didn’t mind any of the others laughing at him.

“Yeah,” Ian said softly. “I guess you’re right.”

“Are we just ignoring the fact that you just said Mickey’s been married before?” Liam said, apparently not about to let that go, and Mickey felt the remnants of an old, familiar dread that had defined his entire childhood and followed him into adulthood creeping into his stomach, causing his shoulders to stiffen slightly and erasing the small smile he hadn’t realized had been on his face.

Ian clearly noticed, and Mickey could feel his eyes on him. He knew Ian would stop if Mickey wanted him to, but something in him made him nod slightly to signal that it was okay. They were getting into a territory here that he hadn’t spoken about in a long time, a dark cloud hanging over his already miserable past that he tended to ignore. Sitting on the couch under the weight of Ian’s arm with the people he knew he could call his new family, he was just a little bit curious about the idea of trusting them with this, of putting some of his past out into the open and letting it go.

“Do you remember, um, Svetlana?” Ian continued once he was sure Mickey was alright. The room was silent now, Liam listening with open curiosity and those who knew more of what had happened watching with blank faces. Sad faces, Mickey realized, and he was oddly touched to think that the shit he had gone through saddened them.

“The Russian lady who lived with Kev and Vee?” Liam replied.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Ian said. “She lived with Mickey before that. They were married.”

“Oh,” Liam said. “I didn’t know you like women, too, Mickey,” he continued, and Mickey almost laughed. The way he said it was so innocent, as though any part of that marriage had been normal, as though it had been Mickey’s choice.

“Nah, kid,” Mickey said, his voice a little hoarse. He was surprised to find that he still wanted to keep talking. “My dad forced me to marry her after he caught me and Ian together.”

Liam didn’t seem to have a response to that. Mickey looked around at the others. He assumed Lip knew the whole story from Ian already, and the look on his face more or less confirmed it. Sandy knew everything too, Mickey having broken down and drunkenly told her every detail one night, years ago. He wasn’t sure how much Debbie, Carl, and Tami knew, but he didn’t want to get into the details, at least not now. He was just glad that he was able to get the words out, able to tell at least this bare-bones version of the worst part of his past to a room full of the most important people of his and Ian’s lives.

“Then what happened?” Liam eventually asked, and the mood shifted a little, and the dread in Mickey’s stomach evaporated.

“Oh, you know,” Ian said, his voice light, “We lived together raising Mickey’s baby for a while, then I was diagnosed with bipolar, and had a few episodes, and broke up with Mickey.”

Mickey knew talking about his worst episodes wasn’t much easier for Ian than talking about the Svetlana stuff was for Mickey. Clearly there really was something in the air tonight that just made it easier for them both, something that stopped the words from getting caught in their throats and making it a little harder to breathe. Something was shifting, bringing with it the gentle hope that the worst of all this stuff was safely in their pasts.

“And then he escaped from prison, kidnapped me, and nearly convinced me to run away to Mexico with him,” Ian continued, and judging by the noises of surprise from some of the others, Ian hadn’t told everyone about that particular story just yet.

“Calm down,” Mickey added, rolling his eyes and marveling at how much this would hurt to talk about if it weren’t for the fact that everything had worked out in the end. “We got to the border and then he decided he couldn’t leave you guys.”

“Aww, thanks for that, Ian,” Carl grinned, holding up his bottle of beer in Ian’s direction. Ian just grinned back and raised his bottle back, squeezing Mickey’s shoulder gently. Mickey knew how he felt. Laughing about it was new, and while they weren’t fully able to forget about the hurt, they were just starting to be able to joke.

“And then you ended up in prison together, right?” Liam asked around a poorly concealed yawn. Mickey had no idea what time it was, but he’d wager a guess it was well past the kid’s bedtime.

“Yep,” Ian smiled, “and the rest is history, as they say.”

They sat around chatting for a little longer, but eventually Liam looked so sleepy that all his siblings started badgering him about going to bed, and everyone stood up and stretched to do the same. Lip and Tami headed out after grabbing Fred from upstairs, calling out tired goodnight’s and see-you-tomorrow’s, and everyone else started making their way upstairs.

Mickey was about to follow Ian into their room when he heard Liam softly calling his name from the door to his room.

“I get it now,” he said seriously, looking up at Mickey. “I get why you wanted to kill your dad so badly before the wedding.”

Surprised, Mickey just nodded.

“I’m glad you didn’t, though,” Liam added, and with a quick goodnight he closed his door. Mickey stared at the spot he had been standing for a moment, before closing his own door and crawling into bed next to Ian.

Later, when Mickey was falling asleep with Ian’s arms around him, he realized that despite how badly he wanted his dad out of the picture, he, too, was glad he didn’t do it, solely because the risk of being in prison right now instead of being where he was just wasn’t quite worth it.

***

On a rainy Sunday just over six months later, Terry Milkovich was dead.

No matter how many times Mickey tried to make sense of the words, he couldn’t seem to feel anything in response to them.

Just minutes earlier, Sandy had come running into the Gallagher house to find Mickey at the kitchen counter, pouring himself a cup of coffee and listening to the inane conversation taking place between Ian and his siblings at the table. Franny had been sitting in Debbie’s lap with pens, crayons, and bits of paper strewn out in front of her. She’d woken Mickey up earlier and made him promise he would help her with a new drawing, and that was the only reason he was up before noon on that particular Sunday, but he was gonna need the caffeine fix before jumping into the fray that was six Gallaghers sitting around a kitchen table.

He hadn’t gotten the chance to sit down, however, because Sandy appeared with a look on her face that made Mickey do a double take. Something was clearly up, and somehow, deep down, he knew what it was even before she had said anything.

“He’s dead,” Sandy said, pale and breathless, her hair and clothes soaked with summer rain. The noise in the kitchen died down immediately as everyone turned to look at her. “Iggy found him when he got home this morning. Someone broke in and shot him.”

Mickey let the words wash over him. He stared at Sandy, gaping, and couldn’t move. He was still clutching his mug of coffee. He vaguely registered a scraping sound from somewhere to his right, like a chair being dragged over the floor, and then he felt Ian’s hands on his, gently taking the mug away. He could hear Ian’s voice and turned to stare at him instead. He still hadn’t figured out how to react when he realized his feet were carrying him towards the door entirely of their own accord. He could hear Ian calling out to him again but he was wrenching the door open and walking down the stairs and he still had no idea what he was even doing.

The august rain was still coming down hard. It drenched Mickey’s clothes within seconds, and the smell of wet, dusty soil was almost overwhelming. For what might have been just a second, or maybe an hour, the rain was all he could hear, and then another sound cut through the downpour.

“Mick?”

Mickey turned and Ian stood before him, equally drenched, brows furrowed and a worried tilt to his mouth as he regarded his husband.

“Are you okay?”

And he knew he _was_ okay, so he didn’t know why he felt so completely overwhelmed, his mind completely blank since Sandy’s announcement, like a blackout following a power surge.

And finally, it hit him. Despite all the talk of finally killing Terry, despite the inevitability of someone else getting there first, despite the way everything has been looking up for Mickey in the last year, he never truly believed that this day would come.

He never let himself believe that he and Ian would finally be safe. That he would be _free_.

The absurdity of the situation caught up with him all at once and suddenly he couldn’t stop laughing. Ian’s eyebrows flew up to his hairline and made Mickey laugh even harder. He laughed, and he laughed, and soon enough Ian was laughing too, and the sound of it made Mickey feel so light he thought he might float away.

They moved towards each other at the same time, wrapping their arms around each other and burying noses into each other’s necks, and Mickey was glad for the rain because he thought he might be crying.

“Jeez, Milkovich,” Ian said, his voice light, teasing, and slightly muffled against a spot under Mickey’s jawline, “anyone would think you’d be happy your dad just died.”

Mickey let out a strangled laugh and moved back slightly to look at Ian. “Yeah, it’s a real tragedy,” he replied, voice deadpan but with a smile he just couldn’t wipe away. “I’m completely devastated.”

Ian’s hand was cupping the side of Mickey’s face, and for a moment, they just stared at each other. Mickey took in every line and freckle on Ian’s face, and with a sigh of relief he could feel the last of his walls come tumbling down. He knew he didn’t need to explain the feelings he couldn’t put into words just yet; Ian understood enough, and besides, they had all the time in the world to talk later.

When Ian kissed him, his mind went immediately back to the moment he’d kissed him during their wedding ceremony. Where that had been his first kiss as a man happily married to the love of his life, this was his first kiss as a free man, and nothing had ever felt better.

“I love you,” Mickey mumbled into the kiss, leaning his forehead against Ian’s and gripping onto Ian’s rain soaked shirt.

“I love you, too,” Ian smiled back at him. “Now let’s get back inside, I’m freezing.”

“Oh yeah?” Mickey quirked an eyebrow, feeling more grounded than he had a minute ago. “Bet I could warm you up real good.”

Despite a loud groan and an “oh my god Mickey, shut up”, Ian was grinning from ear to ear, and his hand found Mickey’s easily.

When they stumbled back into the house, dripping water all over the floor, everyone stopped talking and looked up. Mickey just grinned at them, which at least got rid of their worried expressions, before dragging Ian towards the stairs.

They were halfway up when Franny shouted at him.

“Uncle Mickey,” she yelled, “you said you’d draw with me!”

On the step below him, Ian sighed and leaned his forehead on Mickey’s shoulder for a moment, and Mickey smiled. He was only mildly disgusted with himself at how warm and sappy his voice sounded, but he found he didn’t really care anymore.

“Guess I’ll need a rain check, tough guy,” he said, squeezing Ian’s hand.

Five minutes later, after they had both changed into dry clothes and quickly toweled off their hair, Ian and Mickey were sitting next to each other at the table. Ian threw himself into his siblings’ discussion once again, and Franny had moved to the chair on Mickey’s other side and started giving him detailed instructions on what she wanted him to draw.

Mickey wasn’t even listening to what the others were talking about. He just accepted the crayon Franny handed him and smiled.

His past had never felt so distant.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I love Shrek. Mickey's opinions on Shrek at the start of this are Objectively Incorrect.
> 
> p.s. come say hi on tumblr: ninjapirateunicorns.tumblr.com :)


End file.
